3. Chapter III

`I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the
Time Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete
in the workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly;
and one of the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but
the rest of it's sound enough. I expected to finish it on
Friday, but on Friday, when the putting together was nearly done,
I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too
short, and this I had to get remade; so that the thing was not
complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to-day that
the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a
last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on
the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a
suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same
wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took the
starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other,
pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed
to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking
round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything
happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked
me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it
had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past
three!

`I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever
with both hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got
hazy and went dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently
without seeing me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took
her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to
shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to
its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a
lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. The laboratory grew
faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. To-morrow night
came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and
faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange,
dumb confusedness descended on my mind.